


These Layers of Charnel Air

by Slantedlight (BySlantedlight)



Category: The Professionals
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-29
Updated: 2013-06-29
Packaged: 2017-12-16 14:04:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/862853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BySlantedlight/pseuds/Slantedlight





	These Layers of Charnel Air

He saw him that night, or at least he thought he saw him. It was greyly dark and rain-lashed, the death throes of November, so he couldn’t be sure, not completely one hundred per cent sure. Not the way he’d always thought he would be. The hair was the same, the walk was the same, but… surely it couldn’t be, not so easily, not so suddenly. 

Not after all this time. 

So he stood for a moment, letting the “ _Ta-ras_!” and the “ _Cheerios_!” of the other men sound around him, their hands pounding him roughly on the back in farewell as they headed off home for the night, and then he pulled his donkey jacket closer about him, and the woollen cap lower on his head, and he hunched his shoulders, and then he followed.

The man moved as if he knew where he was going, as if this was his town, and he lived here and knew it well. He was halfway along the high street as Bodie set off, turning down an undistinguished side road with purposeful strides, head bent, watching his feet perhaps, side-stepping now and then to avoid deeply-puddled paving stones. Bodie managed to keep well back, just another worker heading home after last orders, although the man didn’t look around, didn’t seem to look anywhere except at the ground in front of him. 

Then he came to another road and paused on the corner to let a stream of late night cars go past, turning his head either way as they did so. For those moments the man’s profile was back-lit against sodium orange streetlight, and in just those split seconds - one - two - three - Bodie knew it was him. 

_Him, him, him_ , his heart sang, and pounded against his chest. 

Doyle.

He’d found him, this was where he lived. Bodie’s heart lurched at the thought, at the possibility of three whole months of being in the same place, the chance they’d bump into one another, visit the same caffs, or pubs, or supermarket. At the possibility, the vague possibility, that they’d have a chance to speak to each other - or at least for him to speak to Doyle. Doyle would listen, always polite was Doyle, but whether he’d speak back…?

 _God_ , it was Doyle.

He didn’t look any different, at least not from this distance, this night-smudged angle. Perhaps it would show in his face, in his eyes, but his walk was just as strong, just as easy as ever. His shoulders too - he’d always had that way of moving as though everything was connected in just the right way, each muscle, each tendon flowing smoothly, in perfect time, with the next. As though everyone else had just been practicing the way to move, but he, Raymond Doyle, was the one who’d got it right.

That walk took them to the walled promenade, and through a wide gap into darkness beyond, where the sea - Bodie could hear it now, pounding above his own heartbeat - crashed its way onto the shore. Sand and rocks both, Bodie knew from his regular lunch time strolls, sent as the newest crew member to collect steak and kidney pies, sausage rolls and ham salad batches from the bakery on the front. The beach stretched southwards until the cliffs cut it off, rising chalked and grass-scattered from the crescent end of sands. In the other direction it became gradually more rocky, until you were scrambling amongst the pools and the rich brown ribbons of seaweed, eventually out and around the headland to where the lighthouse flashed its lonely beacon out to sea.

So which way would Doyle...?

In the end Bodie wandered casually over to the sea wall and leaned himself against it as though it was a summer’s day and he was taking the air. The wind at least blew the clouds across the waxing moon, at the same time as it blew salt water and sand into his face, and he finally saw movement at the water’s edge - the tall thin movement that was a man, rather than randomly blown flotsam and carrier bags. Doyle, hands tucked into his jacket, head still bowed, shifting his hips occasionally one way, or the other. 

Restless, his Doyle, whether standing still or already in motion, asleep or awake, every part of him _moved_ , as if pulled by the winds and the tides and the deep deep magnetism of the earth…

Yeah, Bodie, and you’re standing out in a gale watching him.

But he didn’t leave, didn’t head off to the comforts of his B and B, the warmth and fug of his own little room. He crossed back to the other side of the road, faded into the shadows, and waited.

It was over an hour before Doyle appeared again, and he walked more slowly this time, as though suddenly tired, as though cold and old and tired, but as he passed Bodie’s hiding place he paused, head still bowed, taking two steps where one would have done. He didn’t say anything though, didn’t pinpoint Bodie’s presence with a sharp gaze and a sharper tongue, he just took the two odd steps, and then continued on his way.

Bodie waited until he was a respectable distance ahead, and then he followed.

They were the sole people on the streets at this hour, their only companions the odd stray dog or rain-slinked cat. After a while Bodie gave up pretending to be casual, threw it all to the wind and gave in to the dark, cold hour, hurrying his pace so that he was maybe a dozen yards behind his prey.

Eventually Doyle turned into a small caravan park, striding past rows of empty vehicles, thin metal shells waiting for summer to fill them and create them anew, and then up a small slope dotted with wind-blown trees to a slightly larger shell set apart from the others, and with a plaque declaring “ _Manager_ ” in paint-peeled letters. He unlocked the door and vanished inside, and he left the door open. Bodie stared at it for a moment, unsurprised, then he took the few steps up, stood in the entrance, and looked around in dim yellow light.

It was a caravan like any caravan, and it could have belonged to anyone. That was the first thing he noticed. The second was that it seemed to be empty, the door ajar to a tiny bathroom by his right, the far end to his left curtained off. There was a gas cooker, a sink with an upturned plastic basin, and a long wooden table surrounded by red vinyl seats. Red curtains at the windows, nondescript brown carpet on the floor, a single mug on the draining board.

And then there was Doyle, a towel draped around his shoulders, face expressionless.

“You,” he said, staring at Bodie and holding on to either end of the towel, feet firmly planted.

“Expecting someone else, were you?” It sounded nasty, unnecessary to his own ears, and he wished it unsaid, wished his anger safely back inside him, deep-locked away.

But Doyle just shrugged, unmoved, and probably unsurprised, and stepped towards him, taking up a kettle on the way, filling it with water, plugging it in to make coffee.

“Taken up a new trade?” Bodie gestured one-handed at their surroundings, out the door at the caravan park.

“Extra money comes in handy,” Doyle said implacably, spooning coffee, sugar, finding milk in a tiny refrigerator and sniffing at it before pouring it into the mug. “Are you in or out, Bodie? It’s cold enough in ’ere without you letting in the rain as well.”

Bodie stared at him for a moment more, as Doyle stirred the mixture for far too long, then reached behind him to close the door. The kettle boiled then, and he was able to watch still as Doyle tipped water into the mug, stirred it again, and passed it to him.

“You not having one?”

“Broke the other cup last week.”

“Ah.”

Silence then, as Doyle leaned against the cupboards, apparently content to say nothing, to do nothing, but wait and let Bodie drink his unwanted coffee.

“You don’t want to know why I’m here?” Bodie asked, not letting the silence stretch, not letting Doyle have the upper hand.

“On holiday?” Deeply disinterested.

“Here?” Bodie sorted and shook his head. “Working. Undercover in town with a construction mob. We’ve just been sent out here for the next job. One of those shopping centres. Was looking forward to a dull old assignment, bashing out walls, knocking in heads.”

“And you found me instead.”

“I found you instead.”

“You could pretend you hadn’t.”

And there it was, out there in the open, bright as blood, slick as pain. You bastard, Doyle.

“No. I couldn’t,” Bodie said, meeting his eyes and holding them for just a moment, before Doyle turned away again. Backing down. “You know I won’t, why ask?”

“Where you staying?”

“The Rose. Molton Street.”

“I know it.”

“Yeah?” Bodie looked a question, but Doyle was staring at his feet again.

“Look, it’s been a long day…”

“And standing out in the rain for hours on end made it feel shorter?”

“Couldn’t sleep.”

“You couldn’t… But you can sleep now?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I could sleep now.”

“Right.” There was too much to say, there was too much not to say, he couldn’t… “Will you be here tomorrow, if I come back, or will I wake up to find you gone again?”

Bodie watched Doyle’s chest rise and fall at that, as if he hadn’t been expecting it, wasn’t prepared to deal with it. Finally he nodded, looked up at Bodie and nodded again, then turned and vanished behind the curtain.

Not sure if he believed it, not sure whether he wanted to or not, Bodie let himself out.

o0o

The next day felt endless, one job after another on site going wrong, the foreman swearing at them all, and not a glimpse of Coleman, Verity, or Anson, working the inside, snugged up to both of them. He was one of the money men by virtue of having spent six months courting them, everywhere they went. Living the high life, he was, a businessman with a good nose for land deals, and the funds to splash around and prove it. A year ago, two, five, Bodie might have envied him his part in the op, now all he could think about was the dirt of it, the rotting, crawling, dirt of it, and how he’d lost Doyle to that dirt.

By two thirty the electricity was off for the whole site, the chippie was still waiting impatiently for the delivery due yesterday, and the rest of them were sent home, with instructions to be bright and early the next morning. Daggart himself closed the site and headed off to the local baths, CI5 tail neatly in place. Too early for the pubs, the rest of them dispersed, and Bodie found himself alone and at a loose end. He called Base, gave his report, and set off for the caravan park.

It was sadder still than it had been the night before, small and grey in the drizzling daylight, most of the caravans obviously worn and slightly dilapidated. Bodie found himself hoping that Doyle hadn’t been here over the summer, hadn’t been the one responsible for them, for letting them fall into this state. That wasn’t his Doyle, to let things slide; he’d always taken such care, shown such pride in his work that Bodie’d ragged him endlessly about it. _Diligent Doyle_ …

There was no answer from Doyle’s own caravan, and the door was locked. Out somewhere at work? “Extra money” he’d said about this place, so he was probably good until at least five… With apparent nonchalance, breathing slowly and deeply to cover the fact that his heart was racing and his stomach dragging, Bodie used his tool set to unlock the door, climbed the steps, and shut himself inside.

He started at one end, in the bathroom, finding soap, toothpaste, a towel, and worked his way determinedly forwards. The kitchen was devoid of anything interesting, except for Doyle’s Browning, the one he’d “lost” that time and had secreted away ever since. The cupboards held All Bran, bread, sugar, a couple of tins of tuna and nothing else. Even the refrigerator was devoid of all save milk and margarine. Did Doyle really live here?

It was the bedroom that proved he did, a drawer full of underwear and socks, a cupboard stacked with jeans and shirts, half a dozen jackets hung on a tiny rail. There was a lamp by the bed, books, and an alarm clock, and in the drawer underneath, a scattering of loose change, a brand new box of condoms, a tube of KY, and a copy of _Mayfair_. Finally, under the magazine was a small, plastic photo album, the kind with pockets to slip the pictures into, and Bodie sat back on the bed and stared at it for a long time before turning the first page.

He’d been expecting the couple of family shots, and the girls, a different one for every page, but he didn’t expect the picture of Maguire near the back of the book and he felt the shock run through him, the anger that followed, the effort of breathing normally. He stared at it for a long time, the ruffled blond hair, the eyes coy and self-aware at the same time, the arrogant turn of the man’s lips as he half-smiled, speaking some words that surely Doyle would remember. The hand on Doyle’s shoulder, and Doyle watching him, caught in profile, such a look in his eyes. Trust, friendship. More?

Bastard, bastard, bastard.

Bodie closed his eyes, flipped through the last half dozen pages, but Maguire didn’t show up again. More women - he remembered most of them, most of the pictures had been taken on double dates, Doyle behind the camera - and then a few blank pages, and nothing more.

And that was all there was of Doyle, in the caravan at least, his entire life fallen, withered away to this.

 _God_ , he had to get out.

The rain had stopped at last, and there was even a glimpse of blue sky to the west, where the sun was already setting. _Big enough to patch a pair of sailor’s pants_ , his mam used to say - but it did nothing for the town, Sneddon-on-Sea grey as grey whether it was raining or not. 

Maybe he shouldn’t see Doyle later, maybe there was nothing to say.

Bodie walked automatically, one foot in front of the other, back along the path from the caravan park, along the prom. It had been over and done with nearly a year ago now, what more could there be left to say? Only… Only, why had Doyle come back for that night, for that one last night, when he wouldn’t even speak to him the next day? If he’d been so in love with that Maguire bloke, then why come back to him for _that_?

He remembered Cowley’s voice, the way he broke it to him that Doyle was out. That Doyle was out because he’d been sleeping with Robbie Maguire, and because he’d blown the long-standing case CI5 had been building against the Reynolds brothers in order to keep sleeping with Robbie Maguire.

“ _People change, Bodie_ ,” Cowley had said. “ _Love does strange things to us all. I’m sorry, lad._ ” 

He hadn’t been at the hearing - even if he’d wanted to, even if Cowley hadn’t sent him back to Liverpool to mop up his own undercover mess of an operation, they wouldn’t have let him in. 

He could have waited by the door though. Waited to talk to Doyle, to find out what had happened, where it had all gone so terribly wrong.

When he’d got back, in the smallest hours of the morning, Doyle had gone, his flat empty, his phone already disconnected. Maguire was gone too, and all his flatmate would say was that they were away to France for a few weeks, and no, he didn’t know when they’d be back, and would Bodie fuck off home, did he know what time it was?

So Bodie had, waiting impatiently, working obediently for Cowley, for CI5, until he’d be able to confront Doyle in the fancy penthouse that was Maguire’s flat. Only Maguire - and Doyle - had never shown up, the flatmate also vanished, the penthouse apparently sold, and no one could tell him where they might have gone.

Bastard, bastard, _bastard_.

Bodie felt his jaw and his fists clenched, took a deep breath and let it go, staring out to sea from the end of the pavement, leaning over the sea wall as he’d done the night before. Today, though, there were just a couple of kids and a dog racing about on the dark, wet sand, their shrieks and cries sometimes carried to him on the wind, sometimes silent, unheard.

It’d do no good to get wound up about it, he had to keep a cool head, keep one step in front of Doyle this time. 

Find out why he’d betrayed CI5.

Betrayed him.

No. Doyle was free to do as he wanted, they’d never had that kind of… of thing between them. He knew he was lying, even as he thought it. But they’d been partners as well, he was owed an explanation for why his life had been turned upside down, why he’d had to start again, to forget all the ways he’d learned to work with someone who’d understood his every move, his every signal, his every thought.

 _That’s_ what he wanted, _that’s_ why he’d make sure he kept an eye on Doyle this time, until he’d got the whole nasty story out of him.

And then he’d be able to move on.

o0o

He watched the caravan until late at night, finally breaking in again, and waiting there when he got too cold. He slept fitfully, sitting hunched in a corner by the table, but the door never opened, he was never disturbed.

Doyle had spent the night elsewhere.

o0o

Come the morning, he dragged himself back to his lodgings, put up with the frowning displeasure of Mrs Hewitt, and the shared-matey winks of Mr Hewitt, and got himself through breakfast and back to work. The delivery had arrived, and he was able to concentrate on hefting timber, and the noise of the buzz saw and the planes, and on the snatches of conversation he heard on site, what this might mean, what that might mean, whether anyone mentioned Coleman or any of his cronies. They didn’t.

“Coming for a quick one?” Morris asked him later, as Jimmy threw him his coat and they all milled around the break room, getting their gear together to go home. 

“Yeah, why not?” He’d have to play sick tomorrow, spend the day tracking down Doyle, might as well start with some dodgy pub grub tonight. “Duck or Towers?”

“Neither - Taff ’ere wants to try ’is luck with the barmaid down the Nag’s Head, end of Giles Street.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen it…” He’d seen all the pubs in Sneddon, fifteen of them, one for every local family, he’d said to Cowley when he’d first checked in, earning himself a glare that he could feel even over the telephone.

They tromped up the road, skies glowering but dry again. _Practically summer in Sneddon_ , Billy from the next village over had joked that afternoon, as the sun blew out from behind the clouds for the second time that day. Another lad kicked a can all the way up the road and into the next one, until Bodie intercepted him and sent it flying into someone’s garden. Doyle’s game that’d been.

He let the others in ahead of him, giving them a chance to sort themselves out, to argue over whose round it was - not his, he’d bought the last one on Tuesday - using it as an excuse to check out the pub while he was waiting. 

And there he was, sitting alone at the bar, the dregs of a pint in front of him. Bodie didn’t even think about it.

“Doyle?” he called, in a voice loud with incredulity and happy surprise. “Ray Doyle? Bloody ’ell mate, it’s been years, how are you?” He pushed his way past curious faces to Doyle’s stool and clapped him on the shoulder, then got a bit of his own back. “Always wondered what ’appened to you!”

Doyle was looking at him as if unsure what to do. _Come on Doyle, react!_ “Ah, don’t tell me you’ve forgotten already? Bodie - we worked together with old George a couple of years ago!”

“Ah yeah…” Doyle stirred himself, “How’re you doing?”

“Good to see you, mate, good to see you! Lemme get you a drink.”

Doyle didn’t look as if he’d just met a life-long chum, but he didn’t protest he’d been just about to leave, and he nodded and lifted his glass to drain while Bodie caught the attention of Taff’s barmaid.

“Thought you promised to stick around?” he said in a low voice, once he’d given a quick wave to the lads, and they were settled with their pints. 

“Still here, aren’t I?”

“Doyle…”

“Yeah, alright, I got held up. Thought I’d be able to get away, but I couldn’t.”

Bodie paused for a moment. “With him?” he asked softly, and wasn’t surprised when Doyle practically winced, turned his head down and stared into his pint.

“Yeah.”

Right. Well, he’d been expecting that too.

“You gonna tell me about him?” Are you going to have the _decency_ to tell me about him, Doyle?

“Not here.”

Bodie nodded, unable to argue with the sense of that. “So where is it you’re working, these days?” he asked in a slightly louder voice, taking in the smudges of oil on Doyle’s jeans, the odd black rim to a fingernail.

“Bike shop. Decent place. At least they know a good Norton when they see one.”

“Yeah, yeah. Nothing newer than nineteen-sixty, right?” Bodie grinned at him then, remembering, without being able to help it, better times, other places. 

“That’s right…” and Doyle’s face softened a bit, he half-smiled, before he looked away again, and then back. “How’s work treating you these days?”

They managed to get through the first few words - coded names, reminders that Doyle was out now, that he couldn’t be told, that he shouldn’t know - and then it eased, became simpler as Doyle tried to talk about football, and Bodie fended him off, and they’d both heard about one of the lads, an old mutual acquaintance, who’d been killed during a scramble a few weeks before. 

“Alright, Bodie?” Morris was standing in front of them, holding a couple of empty glasses in his hands. “Your pint’s going cold.”

“Yeah, sorry Morris, I’ll be over in a minute. This is an old mate of mine - Doyle,” he caught Doyle’s eye, nodded at the other man, “This is Morris - we’re working on the same job.”

“The shopping centre?”

Bodie nodded, turned to Morris. “You lot eating here or heading off?” _Let them be leaving, let them be leaving…_

“Gladys’ll have mine on the table in a bit,” Morris said, “But there’s time for a swift one yet.” He gestured to the barmaid. “You manage another?”

“Yeah, go on, I might get some grub as well. Tell you what, Doyle,” all smiles, “Why don’t I buy you dinner? Call it quits from that poker night then, can’t we?” He glanced at Morris, “He’s mentioned twice already that I skipped out without paying up for that!”

If he expected a fight, a protest, he got none. “Yeah, go on then. I’ll ’ave the Shepherd’s Pie.”

“Real shepherds?”

“They never ’ave fish before Friday, so I suppose it must be.” Doyle half-smiled again, stood and nodded towards the bar, swayed just slightly. “Better get me another pint, an’ all. ’m going for a slash.” How many’d he already had, Bodie wondered suddenly, looking after him as he strode, mostly steadily, towards the Gents. 

“You wanna watch how much time you spend with ’im, you know.”

“Eh?” he turned back to find Morris frowning down at him. He was older than most of them, a happy-go-lucky sort who managed to keep an eye on the crew, and keep the younger ones on the straight and narrow, without coming across as an interfering old bastard.

Morris gestured with one glass in the direction Doyle had gone, lowered his voice even further, so that Bodie could barely hear him over the noise of the early evening crowd, the rattle of the pinball machine in the corner. “Look, I dunno how well you know him, but Jimmy reckons he’s the town poof. You know, good for a bit of company if you don’t mind a touch of the old rough trade. Don’t wanna get yourself a reputation, not when you’re only here a few months.”

“Doyle?” Bodie looked suitably sceptical, “Can’t be - known ’im for years. Straight as a die, is Doyle.”

“Just telling you what I heard, mate,” Morris said placatingly, “He’s been seen, he’s always getting arrested…”

 _Doyle_ … “Can’t be,” Bodie repeated, shaking his head, “Here, I’ll ask ’im, look…” he opened his mouth to speak to Doyle, just emerging from the door across the room, and as he thought he would, Morris vanished to the other end of the bar, firing orders at the girl as though he’d been talking about nothing more dirty than Sam Fox’s latest spread.

Because Doyle as… the town bike? _No_. There was no way he’d changed that much. Vicious village gossip, that’s all it was.

It took him a moment to realise that Doyle hadn’t appeared back beside him, a moment more as he took a long mouthful of beer, scanning the bar, the tables, the jukebox in the corner. No Doyle, but the front door was just closing completely to, the last glide of it’s air-controlled mechanism bringing it to a stop ready for the next punter to yank open and stride across the be-chevroned carpet, calling loudly to his mates. 

Fuck.

o0o

Bodie awoke the next morning, stiff all over, in the caravan. Again, he was alone.

o0o

There was no time, over the next few days, for Bodie to do more than desperately hope Doyle was still in town. He thought he caught a glimpse of him once, but the case had begun to break, Coleman and Verity both appearing daily on site and closeting themselves together with Daggart for hours at a time. Anson reported frantically that he’d been suddenly left out in the cold, that his cover may or may not be blown, that maybe there was a leak somewhere. Bodie listened closely, found as many excuses as possible to be near the Portakabins housing the site offices as he could, and watched to see which of the workers were most often sent on messages out of town. If Coleman and Verity were laundering a major drugs importation racket through their construction business, and using the same business to distribute the stuff, then they were almost perfectly invisible to the authorities, and even Cowley seemed unsure of himself this time.

It was Sunday before Bodie had time free, the whole crew laid off for the traditional day of rest, Coleman, Verity and Daggart away in London for the weekend. He turned over the Portakabins first thing in the morning, using his skeleton keys to get in, prepared to plead theft if someone did show up, but he was neither caught nor successful, and Cowley agreed it would rouse too much suspicion if he wasn’t seen to be acting normally about town.

So he returned to the caravan park, let himself into one of the vans by the entrance, and settled down to wait.

When he finally appeared some six hours later, just as Bodie was wondering if he’d chosen the right plan, Doyle wasn’t coming _into_ the park as Bodie’d expected, he was leaving it. The sod had been in all morning, Bodie could have cornered him at any time, he could have… No, better this way. This way he wouldn’t let Doyle tab him, and he _would_ find out where he went.

Except that where he went turned out to be the public lavatories by the seafront, and though he waited over an hour, Doyle did not come out again.

Bodie found a place to lurk relatively innocently on a Sunday, and he managed to control himself when the first two men entered the small brick building, neither staying long, not suspiciously long, not… The third man broke him, looking as he did surreptitiously from side to side as he went in, clearly looking for someone, clearly hoping for _something_. Bodie was along the pavement and inside before he’d even thought about it, managing to appear calm, casual, a bloke caught short while he was out. 

He moved quietly, entered silently, for all his rush, and managed to surprise the man hovering at the urinal, who looked quickly away, made a pretence of washing his hands, and left hurriedly. The room was empty otherwise, but the door to one of the two cubicles was closed, a scratched “Engaged” showing on the lock in the dim light. As Bodie’d come in there’d been the odd knocking and banging against the door of the cubicle, but since the taps were turned on, the other occupant left, there was nothing. The second toilet was to the left of the urinal, and Bodie slid inside, leaving the door unlocked and ajar, stepped up onto the toilet seat, found a hole in the ancient wall, and waited, barely breathing.

After a moment, the door of the other cubicle opened, and Doyle emerged cautiously and alone. He stepped out of Bodie’s view, but Bodie could hear him sigh heavily, and pace back and forth across the gritted floor.

There’d been no one with him, in fact Doyle had _avoided_ the bloke who came in. Had he avoided the others as well? They’d not been in there long, he must have. In which case, what was Doyle doing? Waiting for someone specific? But why here, why..? A hundred questions, and only one person who could answer them. Still light on his feet, Bodie dropped to the ground and swung around the corner of the cubicle, came face to face with his ex-partner, and took the two steps more that were needed to back him into a corner. No escape this time.

But rather than make any mad dash for freedom, Doyle let himself fall back against the wall, rolled his eyes heavenward, then closed them. Bodie watched him breathing, watched his chest rise and fall, his nostrils flare once. He took in the dank, old-urine, salt-sea smell of the lavatories himself, and then he nudged him gently with his elbow. “Come on.”

Doyle looked at him, shook his head. “Can’t.”

“What d’you mean you _can’t_? Short of pocket money this week?” And he hated himself for saying it, again, because surely now he knew it wasn’t true.

“Yeah, that’s right.” Doyle didn’t budge.

“You know,” Bodie said casually, as Doyle’s eyes flicked to the doorway as footsteps approached, then quieted again in the distance. “I’ve been watching you.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. For someone who’s,” he moved in front of him, ran his eyes lazily the length of Doyle’s body, and then reached out to stroke one finger down the front of his trousers, “Waiting for customers, you’re a bit too choosey about who you let in there.” 

“Get off me,” Doyle finally snapped, knocking his hand away. “Maybe I don’t fancy the blokes on offer.”

Bodie gestured to the empty cubicle, reached out again to stroke Doyle’s cock, which was soft, unthreatening, uninterested. “Like I said, a bit too choosey for the cottages. Twenty quid?”

“What!” Doyle almost laughed at that, “Sod off, Bodie.”

“Alright, thirty. But for that I want to be taken back to your place.”

“Do it here.”

There. _There_ was his Doyle, eyes flashing at him, back straight, fists clenched by his sides.

Bodie looked him hard in the eye, shook his head minutely, looked amused. “Not really my style, this. Not your style either, if I remember rightly.”

“Things change.”

“Not you, you don’t change, not like this.” Do you? 

Footsteps crunched behind him at the door, and he saw Doyle tense, even as he turned and took in the tall figure of the village bobby, heightened by his silly helmet, somehow thickened by the belted serge uniform. Bodie’s heart sped up at the sight despite himself, caught in a public lav, caught doing nothing, but still, the possibilities, how much had he heard?

“ _He’s always being arrested…_ ”

“Everything alright, gentlemen?” the policeman asked, glancing once at Doyle and then looking at Bodie. Bodie managed to nod pleasantly. Everything _was_ alright, there were no clothes undone, no suspicious stains, or smells - even if there nearly had been. “Is this man bothering you, sir?

“God no,” Bodie said, jovially, laying it on thick, “We’re old friends! Hell of a place to stop and chat mind, you’ve got a point there!”

The man looked doubtful. “Well as long as you’re sure there’s no problems.”

“None at all! I was just about to offer him a meal somewhere a bit more respectable - what d’you say, Doyle? Let’s see what we can find, eh?” He gestured Doyle politely past the policeman, out the door. “Afternoon, Constable!”

Outside the grey clouds had turned to drizzle again, a fine, wetting mist of it that somehow felt worse than real rain, down by the seaside where all should be sun and fun and ice creams. Doyle strode along the prom, hands in pockets, looking straight ahead, stone-faced. Bodie waited until they’d turned the corner at the end of the road, out of the sight of prying woodentops, and then grabbed his arm, pulling him to a stop.

“Bodie, _will_ you fuck off!” Doyle shook him off, left his hands, fists clenched, where Bodie could see the danger in him. Oh, _this_ was more like it.

“Not very grateful, considering I’ve just saved you from being arrested.”

Doyle threw his head back, as he had in the lavs, as if supplicating the heavens for understanding, for patience with fools, and for lightning to smite his enemies, Bodie in particular. He took a deep breath. “Yeah. Thank you. Now fuck off.” He started walking again.

Oh no, not that easily.

“Don’t think so, _mate_. We had a deal. Thirty quid, back at your place.”

Doyle stopped again, turned to face him. “And will that get you off my back?”

 _Not in a million years, sunshine_. Bodie shrugged. “Sure. You know what it’s like on an op, a little something to release the tension and then everything’s go. You turned up at just the right time.”

This time Doyle said nothing, but although his face was blank again - always good at that, Doyle had been - Bodie could feel the tension thrumming through him, not the same as it had in the lavs, that was different, that was more immediate. This tension was for Bodie, and Bodie was going to make the most of it. He’d keep the little sod furious and off-balance and _alive_ for as long as it took to break him.

They walked through the drizzle as it grew even heavier, turned into a relentless rain that soaked them both, that blotted out the world around them, up the hill grown slick and mud-covered, and into Doyle’s caravan, and then, for a moment, with the door closed behind them, they both just stood and waited, were together, were _them_. A moment, such a short moment, and then Doyle began to strip off his clothes: jacket, scarf, jumper, shirt, t-shirt still dry under everything else. He’d felt the cold, had Doyle, since being shot by that Chinese bitch.

Bodie watched him, the short, sharp movements that were Doyle _getting on with it_ , and it took all his willpower not to put a stop to it there and then. It could go wrong, it could go horribly wrong, if he wasn’t careful, if he trod too far in the wrong direction, if he… Doyle reached down to pull the t-shirt over his head, and Bodie felt his control waver, felt eight months of wanting Doyle slide into this one moment, where finally, finally, he would have him again.

“Changed your mind?” Doyle asked suddenly, breaking the clothes-rustled quiet, pausing in his movements.

Bodie shook his head slowly. “Not at all. Keep going. Slowly.”

“For thirty quid, you get what you’re given,” Doyle said roughly, beginning to lift his t-shirt, another harsh, practical movement.

Bodie reached out, caught his hands as they pulled the fabric above his stomach, forced them back down again. “I said, _slowly_.” Still covering Doyle’s hands with his own, he guided them gradually upwards, watching as Doyle’s skin was bared, his flat stomach and belly button, his ribcage and the dark hair of his chest. He let go for a moment, brought his hands down to run thumbs across Doyle’s nipples as they appeared, then he raised them again and caught Doyle’s wrists just as the t-shirt covered his face. He could hear Doyle take a breath as if to speak, so Bodie ducked down, took one nipple into his mouth, rubbed it with his tongue, and then the other. Doyle had always liked that. Bodie let go, pulled the t-shirt abruptly over Doyle’s head, and caught a glimpse of parted lips, panted breath, Doyle’s eyes, before they were closed to him again.

He wanted to kiss him. _Not yet_. “Come on then. You gonna make me do it here, standing up?”

Doyle glared at him, turned and led the way back to the bed. He reached over and switched on the lamp, then turned to face Bodie again.

“Oh, much better,” Bodie said loudly, looking around as if he’d never seen it before. Wind buffeted the caravan, and above them the rain pounded onto the roof, making it difficult to talk, making their yellow-lit world more intimate, bounded to just them. In this light, Doyle seemed less certain, or maybe he was, maybe now… 

“Remember,” Bodie said, reaching for him, slipping fingers into the waistband of Doyle’s jeans, and pulling him closer, “Slowly.” He let go, and Doyle reached for the button, for the zip, pushed them down his thighs and then stepped clear of them, stepping on the toes of his socks to pull them off at the same time, kicking them away.

Bodie didn’t move. He watched, fully clothed still, as Doyle hooked thumbs into the sides of his pants lifted them outwards, over his erection - god, he was hard, Doyle was _hard_ \- and down his legs until they too were gone, and Doyle was in front of him, naked, turned on, and somehow still defiant. Then he turned again, bending over, reached into the bedside drawer and brought out the KY.

“Use it,” he instructed Bodie, trying to pass it over, beginning to turn again, to the bed, and this time Bodie caught him, held him still, leaned in and kissed him.

He felt Doyle try to pull away, followed him, then brought a hand to thread fingers through the mess of curls, drew them more firmly together. He slid one hand down Doyle’s back, felt him shiver, over the curve of his backside, used that to press Doyle to him, couldn’t help but move against him, rub his own corduroy-covered groin against Doyle’s nakedness. Mostly, though, he kissed him.

And _god_ , that was what he’d missed, as much as knowing that Doyle was there, beside him, looking out for him, against the villains, against Cowley, against the world. He’d missed snatched moments of touching him, and kissing him when Doyle thought it wasn’t right, wasn’t the place, the time, and most of all when Doyle _had_ thought it was right. He’d missed Doyle’s mouth under his, his fingers reaching for Bodie, breath panting against breath, and the sound of Doyle trying not to moan, to groan, to call out.

“Ray…” Bodie released him, wanting to see him again, his lips, his face, his eyes. 

Doyle tried once more, one last time, perhaps. “Bodie, don’t…” 

“Too late, mate,” Bodie murmured, slid their cheeks together so that he could breathe in Doyle’s ear, so that he could whisper, “It was always too late…”

He let them fall to the bed then, and they both struggled with Bodie’s clothes, to rid themselves of anything that wasn’t just _them_ , until there was nothing left but the way they kissed each other, the way they touched each other, the way they _wanted_. Bodie hadn’t meant to fuck him, for all he’d said, but he found himself reaching for the KY anyway, fumbling in the blankets to find it, kissing Doyle still while he spread it over him, and in him, and on himself, Doyle’s own fingers getting in the way of that.

And Doyle was Doyle again, his Doyle again, and they moved together, and they breathed together, and they came together, while the wind thrummed hard against the caravan, and the rain streamed down the windows, and then, for a while, they slept.

o0o

“You’ll leave now?” Doyle said into the dim electric light, eyes closed still, somehow knowing that Bodie was awake too.

Bodie closed his own eyes for a moment. “Can’t do that, Ray.”

“We had a deal.”

“We had one before, too. You broke it.” Before: months before, years before, lifetimes _before_. 

Doyle shrugged into the mattress, the movement jostling Bodie as he lay on his side, watching Doyle’s profile. 

“You owe me an explanation.” _Obligation_ , that was the way to get to Doyle. Sure enough, there was a pause, a different pause. Bodie could practically feel Doyle’s mind being pulled in opposite directions - the not wanting to, warring with the having to.

“It’s complicated.”

“Life’s complicated.”

Doyle snorted at that, “Isn’t it just.”

“Look, I come back from an op to find you’re being thrown out of CI5 because you’ve been screwing Robbie Maguire when you should have been watching him. We had no information on what he’d been doing all that time, and you’d deliberately blown the case.” He let a moment go by, then said, very seriously “That’s not like you, Doyle.”

That drew a wry grin from him, though it was tinged with other things that Bodie didn’t want to see there. Resignation, perhaps. Regret?

“People change,” Doyle said again, as he had on the angry walk through the rain.

“Tell me about Maguire.” _No, don’t_.

“Bodie…” Doyle looked at him then, met his eyes at last as they lay there together, and then he turned onto his side, facing him, just the way he used to do, so that Bodie wanted to close his own eyes and cry perhaps, or scream, or hit him. He did none of those things, just looked back, and tried to pretend that it might not be the very last time.

“He’s a good bloke,” Doyle said. words jagged from his tongue, “He’s got money, and he likes to have a good time with it.” He shrugged. “That’s all…”

“That’s all? There used to be more to you than that.”

“Maybe I fancied a rest. Maybe I’d had enough.”

“Of CI5?”

“CI5, Cowley, the whole shebang.”

“Cowley was sorry, you know…”

That earned him a narrowing of Doyle’s eyes, a hardening of his mouth. “You weren’t there, you don’t know anything about it.”

“No…” Not much he could say to that, after all. He hadn’t been there when Doyle really needed him. “You should have said something.” _That night…_

“Like what? I’ve come for a goodbye shag - roll over?”

It hadn’t been like that, Bodie _knew_ it hadn’t been like that.

“Bodie… it’s done. Just leave it alone.”

He shook his head, mute, and Doyle looked at him for a moment, and then he moved, gathering them together, reaching over to turn out the light.

o0o

They neither of them spoke the next morning, both needing to get to work, both wanting to leave quickly, cleanly perhaps, in the thin grey morning light. They’d overslept, or perhaps not overslept as much as over-wished, pretending that things could be different, that it was twelve months ago, and that if they didn’t get up yet, if they stayed still for just five more minutes, lying warm against each other, feeling heat and hardness and heartbeats, it might yet be true.

But it wasn’t, and just before Doyle stepped out the door he stretched an arm out to Bodie, dipped a hand into his inside jacket pocket, and drew out the brown paper envelope that held Bodie’s last pay packet. He separated out three ten pound notes, flourished them close to Bodie’s face, and then he gave the rest back, pressing the envelope hard into his chest until Bodie reached up and held it for himself. 

And then he was gone.

o0o

Bodie found himself shifting wood again that morning, from yet another late delivery of lumber, giving him far too much time to think about Doyle, and what had happened the day before. Something itched at him, up and down his spine, never quite bursting to awareness, until he thought he’d go mad with it. He joined the chippies pounding nails that afternoon, grateful for the chance to take out some of his aggression, so that they ragged him for working too fast and too furiously, and he played the fool back for them, until he noticed Coleman on site, and remembered to pay attention to his own, real job.

Coleman seemed to be in a fine old temper, joking with Daggart, and clapping him on the back, taking his leave just before five o’ clock. 

“What d’you reckon?” he said to Morris who was clearing up tools beside him. “Had a win on the geegees, then?”

Morris snorted, “Bit bloody unfair if he did, he’s got enough without it to buy a stable of his own.”

Bodie tipped his head dismissively. “Must be raking it in with this little lot,” he agreed, gesturing expansively at the huge empty framework around them. “I bet this isn’t the only project they’ve got on, either.”

“Never is mate, never is. You’ll not be short of work if you stick with them.”

Bodie looked pleased. “Good to hear. Been to Germany once, didn’t like the sausages.” He paused consideringly, then added, with a conspiratorial grin, “The Frauleins aren’t bad, mind.”

Morris fell for it, nudging him and chuckling, someone else in a good mood after the weekend.

“What d’you reckon to a bit of over-time then?” he asked, “Any chance of it, if I asked Daggers over there?”

“Keeping you short of cash are we?”

“Me ex-missus is,” Bodie said, with just the right amount of gloom, “You wouldn’t think a few pints of milk a week, and the odd nappy could be so expensive, would you?”

“Not yours?” Morris asked shrewdly.

“Yeah, well I know that, and she knows that, but…” he shrugged a they’re-all-bastards-but-what-can-you-do shrug. “She’ll find some other sucker soon enough, she’s good at that.”

“I’ll put in a word for you with Daggart, if you like. You do a good job around here - I’ll let ’em know to keep you in mind.”

“Cheers, you’re a pal. Up for a pint tonight?”

“Thought you were broke?”

“Yeah well,” Bodie caught the twinkle in his eye, smiled back in kind, “You gotta keep a bit out for the essentials, don’t you…”

They went to the White Swan in the end, Taff having missed out at the Nag, and settled down near the fire, nearly a dozen of them. A few of the blokes had picked up girlfriends locally, and one or two were from Sneddon or somewhere nearby, but for most of them there was nothing much to do at the end of the day, far from home and their usual entertainment. 

Bodie went to stand beside Jimmy, leaning idly against the wall, watching Morris gather darts and draw up the board for a game of Killer. Jimmy was the one who’d been talking to Morris about Doyle, Jimmy must know _something_ \- even if it was all bollocks.

“I hear you know Ray Doyle,” he started, Jimmy a plain-speaking youth, Bodie impatient despite himself.

“Who told you that?” Jimmy eyed him sideways, his face hardening.

“Morris over there, the other night. Said you warned him about Ray, or something?”

“Oh,” Jimmy visibly relaxed, “Yeah. Look, no hard feelings if he’s a mate of yours, I’d just watch out if I were you.”

“Yeah, well he’s changed alright,” Bodie tried to look disapproving. “Wouldn’t tell me much though. Was wondering what’s happened to him.”

“Why do you care?” Jimmy asked, suspicious again.

“He’s an old mate. Used to be alright. Who’s that bloke he’s hanging around with?”

“You mean Robbie Maguire?”

“Yeah – is he the one that turned Doyle into a fairy?” He winced inside. “He never used to be like that, you know.”

“Dunno mate, but he’s like that now. Holdings – he’s our local copper - keeps arresting him in the lavs on the prom, and there’s no smoke without fire, is there?”

“So who’s Maguire when he’s at home? He live around here?”

And it was as easy as that, information flowing in a way it never did from grass or a contact or even, god help them, their own side, half the time. Bodie didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the innocence of the ordinary man. So easy, it must be, to live like that, not knowing that what you said to a stranger in a casual conversation could mean life or death to other people. 

For a moment, for just a moment, Bodie wished he could have lived his life that way, that he’d never left home, been to sea, crossed half the world and then fallen in with Nairn and Cowley and Raymond bloody Doyle. And yet… his blood would have been thinner too, he knew that, his heart known less reason to beat. No, for Doyle alone he would do it all again.

He sighed, and swept the salt pot into his pocket as he got up to take his turn at the dartboard. He’d need a whole day to check out Maguire’s place, to find out where Doyle worked, what he was up to. There couldn’t be that many bike shops out here in the sticks, but who knew how long he’d have to waste waiting for this person to leave, for that person to get out of the way. 

“Come on Bodie, have some mercy, eh?” Tuggs implored him from the corner, and Bodie grinned and proceeded to wipe him out of the game with a double five. He’d almost won - needed to curb that right now. He looked around, caught Billy’s eye, and winked at him, before going for his fours. Billy moaned theatrically at the second hit, and Tuggs patted his shoulder consolingly. Bodie looked his cocky best, lined up again - and threw deliberately for his own eighteen, landing perfectly on the treble.

“Yes! Own goal!” Billy jumped up, knocking the table, and earning himself a glare from the landlady. “Too smart for yer own good, Bodie-boy!”

“Ah, can’t win ’em all,” he said philosophically back. “Needed a slash anyway.”

“Course you did mate, course you did!” Billy crowed, nineteen and gleeful with it, and Bodie gave him a grin before picking up his pint glass and heading for the bogs. Shame and all, he’d enjoyed the pie and chips he’d had for dinner…

The salt water was hard to get down - if nothing else it reminded him of taking great gulping mouthfuls of it from the sea when the lads threw him overboard for insolence, somewhere off Freetown. He’d had the rope, he’d known he wouldn’t drown, but… it wasn’t long after that he took off, landward locked again, and he could have lived without even this relatively brief outing to Sneddon-on-Sea.

Feeling nauseous already, Bodie abandoned his pint glass, and headed back to re-join the lads, and to be copiously sick.

o0o

He woke the next morning with a sour mouth, and no desire to eat breakfast, but satisfied that he had the day to himself. The only down side was that he had to leave his car parked outside the B and B, in case someone from the site wandered past on his way to the shops by the prom, but there were only a few miles in it, and as a bonus the world was shrouded in fog, thick and concealing. As long as it didn’t lift, and as long as he could find his way there in the first place, it would make getting in and out a breeze.

He stuck to the main road out of town, ducking his head into his collar, and hunching his shoulders whenever a car approached, but it was grey and dim enough still that all they’d see was a dark figure plodding along the roadside, if they even noticed he was there at all. After the second near miss, he abandoned the tarmac and strode along the frosted grass verge, amongst the skeletons of trees and bushes. Fields stretched away into the fog on the other side of the road, empty of all but the odd covey of partridge, pale brown lumps of birds that Bodie would as happily have seen on a plate. 

After an hour’s walking he was chilled to the bone and just wondering if he’d missed the turn off, when he finally spotted the gatehouse that Jimmy had described. “ _Delusions of grandeur?_ ” Bodie had suggested – “ _Delusions of being a wanker,_ ” Jimmy had corrected him. There was apparently a gatehouse keeper in residence, as well as his wife, who commanded a small bevy of what had once been called servants to keep the mansion running smoothly. Bodie decided to bypass them all, backtracked to the end of the tall stone wall that had sprouted behind the line of roadside shrubbery a few hundred metres before, and was over it and crouched on Maguire’s property just five minutes later.

There was a further tangle of woods on the other side, silent as someone’s grave, and Bodie moved carefully through it. From what he’d heard of Maguire and his pals from Jimmy the night before, it was unlikely they were organised enough to keep a strict guard, but Jimmy freely admitted he’d only been out to the place once himself, and that was to do some repair work to the barn roof. There were parties – apparently wild parties – but no one local saw the inside of those.

Maguire’s house was old indeed, although far from run down, a maze of rambling buildings, extensions and outbuildings spread across acres of land. Bodie approached it warily, but there didn’t seem to be anyone around, and he tried desperately to push from his mind the idea that they were all still in bed, lying in after the excesses of the night before. 

Doyle, lying in after the excesses of…

No. Bodie shook his head. Doyle would be at work by now, he had to be, there weren’t many bike shops that would take on part-time staff. If he was lucky everyone else would have left early too - it was nearly half eight, time enough for anyone with half a brain to be up and at the day, even if it was a grim day in December. There might be staff around, of course, but they’d be bustling about their own business, easy to avoid.

He broke into the house easily enough, straight through the front door, snatching up the mail on the mat as an excuse if he was caught, but nothing and no one moved. He slid from door to door, working out the layout should he need to leave in a hurry, counting exits, obstructions, possible inhabitants. There was a pile of dishes beside still-steaming water in the sink, and abandoned cloths and tins of boot polish on the kitchen table, but neither boots nor kitchen skivvies were in evidence. 

Upstairs was much the same – anyone who’d been there was recently gone, two of the many bedrooms made up, beds rumpled. 

_Not Doyle, not Doyle, not Doyle…_

Bodie slid into the largest of the rooms, began a quick search of the usual hiding places, and when they revealed a small set of scales, a bag of white powder, and a Browning Hi Power didn’t bother to look for unusual ones. Small time stuff, although the gun was more sinister. Still, as Jimmy said, where there was smoke… There was nothing else, apart from several dozen home-made videos with rather dubious-sounding labels, and he pocketed one to check later.

It was in the basement that he really found what he was looking for, hidden behind a false wall. Not just charlie, but heroin. Lots of it. What the fuck was Doyle doing with someone who…

Understanding came upon him in a hot, smothering rush. Doyle _wouldn’t_ , not in a million years.

Time to call Cowley.

o0o

He managed to hitch a lift back into town with a rather shapely but naïve brunette, leaving her with the kind of smile and warning that had her locking the door after him, and driving quickly on her way. It was barely quarter past eleven yet, so he chanced the Co-op for a couple of Ginsters’, and a small bag of tangerines, then made for the phone box by the post office.

“This is Alpha One.”

“Did you know Doyle was down here?” Bodie asked, unable once again to be either subtle or tactful or wise.

“Of course I did, 3.7. Is this related to the case?”

“Not exactly…”

“Then… och, the damn fools!” Bodie could hear shooting in the background, Cowley’s voice become distant, muffled, “ _Well where did you say Stuart was last seen?_ ”

“Sir…” Bodie began, wanting answers, needing answers. 

“Yes, Bodie, Doyle is involved with your case. Get in touch with PC Holding, and show him your I.D. I’ll instruct him to tell you what you need to know.”

“Sir…”

He heard the crash of Cowley’s phone being hung up as a painful ringing in his ears, put his own handset down carefully, and yielded his place to the old lady outside who had one hand on her walking stick, and the other wrapped in her dog’s lead – a Doberman – and who subjected him to a volley of abuse on the subject of men of his age who couldn’t be bothered to get a job. He spared a moment of sympathy for whoever it was she was about to call, looking absently up the street in the direction of the tiny police station. 

PC Holding… the bloke who was “ _always arresting Doyle in the lavs on the prom_ ”… 

He forced himself to turn in the opposite direction, back towards the B and B, to nod normally to an inquisitive Mrs Hewitt, to climb the stairs to his room, sit on his bed, looking out over rooftops and the tips of trees, and to eat one of the pasties. He breathed calmly, peeled a tangerine, and let the sharp smell of sunshine take him back to when he was a child, back home in Oxton, with his first tiny orange pulled from his Christmas stocking. It felt like years since he’d had a Christmas like that, all its surprises good ones, all its warmth from being well fed, and well cared for and well loved.

Right.

He pulled his I.D. from its hiding place in the hollow metal leg of his bed, tucked it deep inside his inner jacket pocket, and headed back into the day. The fog had blown away from town and the seafront, withdrawing inland, but in the distance, through the gap at the end of the high street, he could see it still curling around the headland, blotting out the lighthouse. Somewhere a seagull called out, far away and lonely, and closer to, a school bell rang to let the children out for lunchtime. 

Holding was eating his own lunch when Bodie appeared, although he put down his sandwich promptly enough, and left his own desk in the back of the room to attend the public counter. 

“Bodie, CI5,” he began, determined to have his questions answered this time, even if it was by a snot-nosed woodentop from the sticks. _One good copper_ , Doyle’s voice whispered treacherously in his head, and he clenched his jaw against it. He didn’t care who this boy thought he was, CI5 contact or not, he was still just a constable in a little seaside town.

“Oh you’re the one then,” Holding interrupted, looking him up and down until Bodie wanted to punch him. “Cowley said you’d come ’round. Hope you’re pleased with yourself!”

Bodie glared at him, and Holding quailed a little, though he still stood tall, still stared defiantly back.

“What,” Bodie asked through clenched teeth, “Are you talking about?”

“Coming over here, blowing the case…”

“Sonny,” Bodie leaned against the counter, so that it suddenly seemed flimsy between them, not a barrier at all, “I was sent here by George Cowley weeks ago, and if you don’t tell me what the _fuck_ Ray Doyle has to do with my case…”

“It’s _his_ case that you’re blowing! He had information for us last Sunday, and you were in the way.”

“Well if someone had seen fit to clue me in, then I wouldn’t have been, now would I?” He took a breath, tried to recall some of the calm he’d fought for earlier. “Look, Cowley said I was to ask you about the case at this end.”

“Well then maybe you should let me tell you, instead of jumping down my throat!” Holding suggested, although he looked somewhat more conciliatory, and his voice was quiet when he continued. “We’d’ve had ’em last Sunday night if Doyle’d been able to get the information out, three of ’em. Maguire taking delivery, Coleman making the payment – and there was some kind of emergency, Forbisher was in town at the same time!”

“Not enough to get him hung,” Bodie said absently, adding up enough variables to make only ninety nine per cent of a case. “Where was the delivery?”

“Right under your nose – at the building site.”

Bodie thought back to Sunday. “The wood?” Something came in with the wood?”

“Something came in the wood. Hollowed out four-by-fours, just enough to get a three foot tube of powder down ’em. Glue it back together, you’d never know unless you were looking.”

Bodie nodded, thoughtful. “That gets you Maguire and Coleman, but… wait a minute, Forbisher? The politician?”

“The very same.”

Bodie whistled. “One of Maggie’s boys - he’d fall hard.”

“It’d rub off on Old Iron Knickers too. We’ll turn her yet!”

“Yeah, but you’d have to catch him in the act, wouldn’t you, and he’s gotta be too smart for that. No way he’d deal with Coleman and Verity direct, not if they’re dealing with Maguire themselves - he’s distributing for them, is he?”

Holding nodded. “Forbisher was here strictly to meet the go-between.”

Bodie froze. “Doyle..?”

“Doyle. _If_ Maguire’s not chucked him out permanently.”

“What d’you mean?” Bodie looked up, his racing thoughts pulled to a sudden halt. “Why would he…”

“What’s your connection to Doyle?”

“He’s my partner!” And that was true, no matter what happened to either of them.

“Alright, just asking…”

“Get on with it!”

“Maguire heard you were old _mates_ ,” he said, putting a nasty twist on the word, “and that you were asking questions. He decided Doyle’d been a bit loose with his… affections.”

“What..?” Too slow, much too slow. Bodie pulled Holding towards him. “Is Doyle alright? Where is he? If that toerag…”

“He’s fine!” Holding shoved down at Bodie’s arms, and Bodie released him. “Well he’s alive at any rate. They dumped him in the lavs some time this morning - I found him there about an hour and a half ago. Took him back to his caravan. Oi!”

But Bodie was gone, ignoring the last, frustrated shout, not caring who saw him as he pelted down the high street. He took the back way to the caravan park, racing across the town football pitch, vaulting the ancient barbed wire fence that pretended to separate it from the wilderness of scrub and sand dunes, and wrenching at the flimsy metal door. There was movement from the bedroom, and he pulled the curtain back hard, so that plastic rings flipped from the railing.

Doyle, half-propped in the corner of the bed, met him with Browning held steady.

“Great, just what I need…”

“Christ, Doyle!” Bodie stared for a moment, then turned back and closed the door behind him, mechanically flipping the latch that Doyle had left undone. Then he sat down on the edge of the bed, and stared some more. Doyle closed his eyes, let the gun fall to the bed.

“How’s the other guy look?”

Doyle looked up wearily at that. “Oh, they ’ad a great time.”

“How many?”

Doyle shrugged, then winced. “Four. You’ll like this - one of ’em was a woman…”

“I don’t like that.”

“Neither did I… Look, Bodie. Just go home, would you?”

Bodie shook his head, continued to look down at the mass of bruise and blood that had once been his partner. He felt frozen, unable to do anything, for fear of making it all worse. It had all gone so horribly, horribly wrong, and he didn’t know how, or why…

“Ray…”

“Look, I’ve spent eight _fucking_ months on this _fucking_ case, and I don’t need you here lousing it up!”

Bodie watched as Doyle tried to sit, screwed his face up in pain, and subsided back onto the mattress, one arm holding his ribs, the other still by his gun.

“Please? Go home…”

“Did you let Holding clean you up?” he asked calmly, knowing he hadn’t, seeing the dried blood matted on his shirt, the mud slicked over his jeans, across his face. “Come on - get ’em off.”

“Fuck off.”

“Hard way or easy way, sunshine, those clothes are coming off, and you’re being covered in water. You want to stay here for it, that’s up to you…”

“ _Then_ will you go away?”

Doyle knew he wouldn’t. “Sure, as soon as you stop looking like something the cat threw up.” He took hold of Doyle’s arm, pulled gently, and Doyle eased himself to the edge of the bed, eyes still shut - or maybe they were open, Bodie could barely tell - and sat up gingerly. He didn’t lean against Bodie, and Bodie took care not to touch him too much or too hard, not to put his arms around him and hold him and wish that things were different.

Instead he walked ahead of him to the shower, keeping an eye on how Doyle was moving, worrying about his ribs, about the way he was limping, about the way he swayed from one piece of furniture to the next in an effort to stay standing. Then he sat him down on the toilet, and started undressing him. Most of all, he worried about the way that Doyle let him. Concussion? Worse?

It wasn’t warm in the caravan, so he tried hard to work quickly, filling the sink with surprisingly hot water and dipping the washcloth in and out until it was either a frightening shade of pink, or mud-coloured enough to hide a million germs. Doyle’s face turned out to be more mud than bruise, his body more bruise than mud. Bodie knew it was hurting him when he didn’t complain.

“Shower works, y’know,” Doyle said finally, leaning forward carefully and holding his head in his hands. “’F I use that I won’t stiffen up as much in the morning.”

Bodie stood up, eyeing the plastic attachment doubtfully. “You manage?” he asked, and forced himself to step out of the tiny room when Doyle grimaced at him and nodded. He was back in though, at the first thud on the thin plastic walls, at the sight of Doyle slumped, sliding down, against the corner.

“Alright, mate,” he said, stepping fully clothed under the surprisingly powerful, surprisingly warm rush of water, “Let’s see what we can do, eh?”

“Bodie…”

“Shut up and do what you’re told for once in your fucking life. Hold onto me.”

Quiescent, more from pain and exhaustion, Bodie thought, than because he felt he had a choice, Doyle leaned back against him, let Bodie run soapy hands across his skin, let him rub shampoo across his scalp, and rinse it all away afterwards. He turned him around and did it all over again, wishing they were there for other things, wishing he was the slightest bit turned on by the feel of Doyle’s arse soap-slick in his hands, Doyle’s cock against his own, wet-trouser covered groin. 

The heat of the shower finished Doyle off, he collapsed on the bed straight into what Bodie hoped was sleep, and stayed awake to watch over in case it wasn’t. He took his own clothes off, knowing they wouldn’t dry before tomorrow, and crawled under the blankets to lie as close as he could, wanting to give off heat and comfort, and anything else Ray might need.

And all the time his mind was racing. Had Doyle known that Bodie would be in Sneddon? He hadn’t seemed to when they first met. Should Bodie have expected the connection of his own case with Maguire, with Forbisher, for that matter? He’d not known either was involved - there’d been nothing in Cowley’s briefings, but then when was there ever? But if Cowley had known Doyle was there, he must have expected them to meet up, so why hadn’t he told either of them as much? Why risk blowing the case on… on the fact that they were _bound_ to meet up and…

He wanted them to meet up. He either trusted them not to make a production of it - except that he’d had Doyle thrown off the squad for the sake of his bloody op - or else he _wanted_ them to make a production of it, wanted them to… to what, for fuck’s sake?

He fell asleep no wiser, to the sound of Doyle’s breathing, heavy and regular in their thin, wind-blown world, as the daylight leeched from the caravan and night came upon them again.

o0o

He woke to movement beside him, Doyle trying to get up in the dark, and put out a hand to stop him. “What d’you need?”

“Tea. Want one?”

“I’ll get it…”

“Nah, do me good to move. Stiff all over,” Doyle explained, his voice low. “My god it’s cold…”

“How’s your head?”

“Still attached. Are you ready to leave yet?”

Bodie watched the dark shape shrug into a jacket – and nothing else – and slip through the gap in the broken curtains. After a moment the gap became a glare of light, and he looked away, blinking. He stared up at the ceiling then, listening to the sound of the kettle being filled and switched on, the swish of water and the clink of spoon on china. Outside the wind had risen again, in the distance the sea crashed upon the shore. 

He sat up, turned on the light, and reached into the drawer, underneath the magazine and the condoms and everything else. 

“Thought you’d keep the bed warm at least,” Doyle said, handing over the mug, looking warily at the small plastic book in Bodie’s other hand.

“Waiting for you, wasn’t I. Thought we’d have a bedtime story.” He put the mug on the bedside table, waited just long enough to know Doyle was hesitating. “Get in.”

Doyle pursed his lips, glanced again at the photo album, and slid carefully into bed. Bodie lifted an arm and put it around him, drawing them closer together, certain now with the clarity you sometimes felt immediately upon waking. It would be alright. He _knew_. 

Doyle was tense, but he didn’t resist. Bodie waited until they were comfortable, and then he started flipping through the pages of the book, hesitating at each picture.

“There’s your mum… your sister… nice one of her. Brother. Still reckon he needs his head read, going out with a copper. Funny lot, some of them. There – that’s the day we took the girls to the beach – me and Dinah and Mary. The zoo – me and Sarah, can’t remember where Sally’d got to. Me and the twins, that was a good few weeks. Me and Fiona. Me and Penny and Claire. Me and that other Claire. Me and Helen and Jackie. Me and…”

“Bodie…”

“…me and Alison and that French bird with the weird name, me and Annabel and Laura, me and Liz, and that’s Julie’s arm there, I think. Me and Raquel and Lorraine. There’s fifteen pictures here, Ray, and I’m in eleven of them.”

“Couldn’t get you out of the frame,” Doyle protested, “Bloody poser.” But Bodie could hear the defence in it.

“Bollocks. We took loads of photos of just the girls. If it was pictures of them you wanted…”

“You’re the only person I know who thinks he’s the centre of everyone’s universe!”

Bodie flipped over the last page, and they both of them stared at the picture of Doyle and Maguire.

“Tell me about your case, Ray.”

Doyle tried to pull away from him then, but Bodie made sure he kept careful hold, bruises or no bruises, until Doyle sighed impatiently, and reached the other way instead, across him to pick up the cup of tea. He drank down a mouthful, eyes on something distant, then offered the cup to Bodie. They shared it, another warmth between them. Doyle’s lips, Bodie thought, would be tea-flavoured, but he didn’t kiss them. Another time.

“You remember Julia Tranter?”

Bodie thought back, long years ago. “That hooker who’d wait for you outside Mario’s?”

“That’s the one. She had a daughter, Sylvie. Pretty little thing. Julia was desperate to keep her off the game, to make sure she got to school and did her homework and so on. She was ten years old last time I saw her, doing well. Bright girl, too.” He paused, swallowed audibly.

“Go on.”

“Julia tried to set up a meet with me last March, while you were up north. By the time I got around to looking for her she was dead. Overdose.”

Bodie nodded sympathetically. It happened. He waited for Doyle to get to the point.

“Thing is, I bumped into a mate from the patch she worked not long after that, mentioned that she’d tried to get in touch. He told me that Sylvie was heading the same way, had got in with a bloke called Robbie Maguire, a right flash Harry.”

“So you thought you’d look him up.”

“Yeah. Thing is, Julia’d never been the type to do drugs – okay, a bit of weed, but not the hard stuff, that wasn’t her scene. I figured either she’d fallen on hard times, and if nothing else maybe Sylvie could do with some help, or else this Maguire bloke was pretty persuasive. Thing is, when I got past the bouncers on the door, who’s Maguire cosied up with? Jem Reynolds…”

Reynolds and his brother, already up to their necks in it with CI5 – so Doyle’d found another way in, had gone undercover to work a fresh angle. Bodie’d been in Liverpool by then, managing his own op.

“The least of it was that they were making movies of the girls – getting them hooked on whatever they could feed them, then making ’em pay for it by appearing in the films.”

“Pretty standard, Ray,” Bodie said gently. “We all know it goes on…”

“She’s only sixteen! She’s a kid, got her whole life in front of her… _had_ her whole life in front of her… They don’t care how much stuff they give ’em, Bodie, they don’t think of ’em as women at all – they’re just hookers, they’re just _things_ to Reynolds and his mob, they don’t care what happens…”

“I know, I know,” Bodie could feel the anger vibrating through Doyle now, an unsettling _thrum_ through the air around them. “But that’s Drug Squad business, isn’t it?”

“Yeah... Yeah. Thing is, Maguire took a fancy to me,” Doyle avoided Bodie’s eyes, “Decided I was his new best friend, and took me off one day to meet his step-dad at the Club, for lunch.”

“At the… _Forbisher_? Forbisher is Maguire’s father? How does he get away with _that_?”

“Sticks to the respectable side of Reynolds, doesn’t he? The Bond Street banker side. Even Forbisher couldn’t be tarnished with that connection. What he _could_ be tarnished by is the fact that he’s financing the whole thing – the movies, the drugs, the works. So…”

“So he routes it through Maguire, leaves a trail of innocent-looking connections that could be pure coincidence, and his son’s the perfect fall guy!”

“Top of the class, my son.”

“But…” Bodie was boggled. To do that to your son? Even if they were related only through marriage… He tried again. “And Forbisher just thinks you’re a mate of Maguire’s then?”

Doyle shifted in his arms, tried to pull away again. “Not exactly.” 

“Why did Cowley send you in on this, Ray?” Bodie let him go abruptly, needing his own space for what he was about to hear, knowing that he’d need huge lungfuls of air and space and… 

“Cowley knew we’d been …seeing each other. You and me.”

“What!” _Oh Christ_ …

“That night we came home pissed from the opera, d’you remember? The girls pulled out on us at the last minute, and we went anyway. Came home, decided we didn’t care who knew, said whatever we wanted in the flat?”

Bodie nodded. He remembered. He remembered a glittering night, feeling so close to Doyle that he didn’t want anything in the way of that. He remembered everything he’d said to him, and he remembered that he’d never really thought that Cowley bugged CI5 flats as a matter of course anyway, and declaring that even if he did, this time, this one time he could shove it, because he was going to tell Raymond Doyle everything he wanted to do to him, just seconds before he did it, and… “That was over a year ago.”

“Suppose he was saving it up, wasn’t he? Anyway, he told me he knew I swung both ways, and that if Maguire’d been a woman I wouldn’t have thought twice about it.”

 _But this was different_ , Bodie wanted to shout, this wasn’t about _women_.

“So you went.”

“I had to, Bodie. Maguire put a video on one night before I even met Forbisher. Sylvie was in it.”

Bodie nodded again. He couldn’t really do anything, except wish that he’d been there at the time. Of course Doyle had gone. “But why the Susie?”

“When I told Cowley that Maguire had met Forbisher, and what they’d talked about – Coleman and Verity and the latest delivery - he went to the Minister. And the Minister told him to back off.”

Bodie looked at him. “ _What_?”

“Yeah, that’s what I said. Then he said the only way to get Forbisher and cut it off at the top, was as a Susie. I wanted to tell you, but…” he swallowed again, “Bodie, I didn’t give up CI5 for Maguire, I gave up you for CI5…”

Cuckolded, not for a bloke, not even for a woman, but for George Cowley. Bodie closed his eyes, let the words flow over him, around him, through him. It had been that easy for Doyle then, a fair exchange: give away Bodie to make the lives of a dozen strangers more comfortable… No, that wasn’t fair, he knew what heroin and cocaine and LSD did to people, he knew the life expectancy of kids caught up in the porn industry before they were sixteen years old, and with Forbisher involved god knew where the money’d end up after that. A very political animal, was Forbisher. 

“…I wished I hadn’t done it, but it was too late to go back, too late to tell Cowley no. And when I saw the rest of ’em I couldn’t change my mind anyway. You _know_ I couldn’t…”

“No note, no nothing?”

“I wanted to. I wanted you to be in on it. Cowley said no. They knew you were my partner, it had to look convincing…”

“And I’m not that good an actor,” Bodie agreed dully, feeling his heart somewhere in his throat, his mouth, choking him.

“It wasn’t that… _I’m_ not that good an actor. I think Cowley knew that if I saw you properly before I left I wouldn’t be able to go through with it. I _wanted_ to…”

“Yeah.”

“Bodie…” Doyle turned onto his side again, lifted himself up to look into Bodie’s eyes. Bodie stared back, not knowing what to think, what to do, what… He’d known it would be bad. Had he known it would be this bad? Would it have been better if Doyle _had_ fallen for Maguire? If he had, then Bodie could have hated him. All he could see was Doyle, framed in the world above him, so he looked through him instead, focussed on nothing, focussed on… That was the trouble. Bodie couldn’t hate him, not when this was just Doyle being Doyle. 

_Diligent Doyle_.

“Come out,” he said suddenly, not knowing what he was asking until the words were spoken. “Drop it, and come out. _Now_.”

“Bodie…”

“Now.” Which way would Doyle jump then, his diligent Doyle, his devoted Doyle, his _damned Doyle_?

No. Not fair. He did look at him then. “Sorry. I didn’t mean it.”

“No, Bodie, I…”

“I didn’t mean it. Leave it.”

“I’ll do it, I’ll drop the case. As far as everyone knows, I’m out of CI5 anyway, I’ve got nothing to lose. We’ll get Forbisher and Maguire both.” Doyle spoke quickly now, eyes flicking back and forth across Bodie’s face, his mind surely racing. “I’ll go to the papers with what I’ve got, they’ll print in a heartbeat, they’ll…”

“Yeah, but you’ve still got no evidence – unless you’ve been sitting on it. And they’ll know it was you.”

“Doesn’t matter, not if it stops them, not…”

“He’d have you killed, no matter where they put him,” Bodie said, knowing that Doyle knew it too, that he wasn’t thinking straight. “Remember Preston? Forbisher’s got just a little more clout.”

“Yeah…”

Too much, it was all too much. “Why d’you do it?”

“What?”

“Give in. The other day. When you’d kept it up for eight months?”

“Not with you here in town. Would you have left me alone, like I asked?”

“No.”

“There you go then.”

“That’s not what you said the other day.” Bodie remembered the look on Doyle’s face, empty, devoid of interest, of care. 

“I was tired the other day. Pissed off. Thought we’d have a fight, you’d hit me, that’d be that. Then I thought we’d have a fight, you’d fuck me, and _then_ it would be over.”

“Got it wrong, didn’t you?”

“Again.” He gave a sigh, Bodie felt it flow through him. “I screwed up by listening to Cowley in the first place, I get a second chance, and now I’ve screwed that up too.”

Still not like Doyle to be so resigned to failure, especially when he hadn’t, after all, failed. “Screwed up how?”

“You.”

“Nah,” Bodie said, realising that it was true. Didn’t matter that there was a part of him that he knew still resented what Doyle had done, that he was already planning torments, in the back of his mind, for Maguire, and anyone else who’d touched him, or that if he ever saw him again he’d tear Cowley limb from limb, because this, this moment, felt _right_ again, as his world hadn’t felt for a long, long time. “Takes more than bloody Cowley to do that.”

“Simple as that is it?” Always one to eye up the dark side, was Doyle. 

Bodie sighed in his turn, pulled him back in, and gave him a hard enough squeeze that it elicited a grunt, not to mention a twinge of interest from his own cock. “No,” he said patiently, “But we’ll work it out.”

Instead of saying anything right away, Doyle leaned in even closer, so that their foreheads touched, so that they lay chest to chest, skin to skin everywhere they could, and then he tucked his face just under Bodie’s, cheek to cheek as well, a still dance in the bed, in the gentling wind that blew outside. 

A rough whisper in his ear. “I missed you, Bodie, so fucking much…”

Bodie kissed him then, on his cheek, because that was what he could reach, and then across skin to his lips, and then they just lay there.

“I woke up once,” he whispered, “That night. You kissed me, when you thought I was out for the count, and then you lay there watching me. I fell asleep again, to that. But I _knew_. Couldn’t figure out why you’d leave, after _that_.” 

“That was the night you got back, just after Cowley’d hauled me up before the board for turning traitor. They’d just found me guilty. I knew I’d be so deep in, after that, that…”

“We work better together, you know. You thick bastard.”

“Yeah,” Doyle breathed into his neck, and Bodie felt the flutter of eyelashes against his skin. “I know.”

o0o

It took them until morning to come up with a workable plan, followed by four interminable days spent on the building site, wondering which of the lads had grassed up Doyle because Bodie’d been asking about him, keeping an eye out for Coleman and Verity but seeing Anson instead, not letting himself be caught calculating which of the piles of lumber was the one that never seemed to be used for anything.

Doyle stayed cloistered in the caravan for two of those days, convalescing he would have said, if Maguire had asked, but apparently that wasn’t a worry – Maguire preferred his lovers to come to _him_ , and he was serious enough about Doyle not to give in to him. 

“Told me not to come back until I’d made up my mind who was better for me – you or him.”

“But – half the town reckons you’re cottaging on the prom…”

“Oh he thinks that’s funny. Turns him on.”

“Christ, did you have to tell me that?”

“Sorry…” and Doyle made it up to him, bruises notwithstanding, so that there would only ever be one night, one place, and a thousand whispers in the dark that Bodie thought of when he heard the word _cottaging_.

On Thursday Doyle went back to Maguire, and they both tried too hard to pretend that this was a normal part of the job, that things weren’t different, that it would be alright afterwards, no matter what. Bodie didn’t know what he hated most, the casual way Doyle said goodbye, or the slight look of desperation in his eyes as he turned down the hill, away from Bodie.

He could do it, he _knew_ Doyle could do it – he was one of the best undercover agents on the squad. If he wasn’t they wouldn’t be here in this mess.

Bodie went back to Maguire’s place as well, after work, when he could, familiarising himself with the man and his friends. New breed, he thought, upper class twit crossed with football hooligan. Not quite smart enough to appreciate his stepfather’s machinations, arrogant enough to think that the world revolved around him. Nasty.

An even more interminable weekend followed, of forced jollity with the lads in the pub, and with the Hewitts who’d decided to decorate for Christmas, and insisted that Bodie help them, all alone as he was. Bodie thought of tangerines, and of cottaging, and longed for it to be the end of next week. 

Then finally, _finally_ , it was Thursday night and he was slipping into the Capri and heading back west to London, the sky above cold and black, tinged with stars.

o0o

Bodie breathed in the cold, foul air of the city as he dialled the familiar number, and he was glad to be back.

“Alpha one? What is it, three-seven?”

“Thought you should know sir, Doyle and Robbie Maguire will be meeting Peter Forbisher at 29 The Grey Mews, two o’ clock today. Doyle will be wearing a wire, but it would be better if you could have extra bugs, and agents planted in the Club, ready to act.”

“What are you talking about, man? I’ve authorised no such...”

“No sir, this isn’t authorised,” Bodie took unexpected pleasure in that, “But I think you should be there anyway. This may now be the only chance you get to make the connection that you require.”

And he hung up on George Cowley.

o0o

29 The Grey Mews was as genteel as it was possible to be, and Bodie watched from across the street as first Forbisher arrived, and then Maguire and a besuited Doyle, all of them vanishing into the elegant interior, sitting down, no doubt, with something to warm their cockles and ease the conversation. Bodie followed the minutes as they ticked away on his watch, forced himself to stay still until the exact seconds has passed, and then he sauntered casually between the cars and across the road, and flashed his I.D. at the doorman. Either the card frightened the man, or else Cowley had given in to the promise of netting Forbisher, because he was waved through without even a blink of aged eyes.

He spotted Darlow, Forrester and Bishop within seconds of entering, and breathed a sigh of relief. Cowley had taken the bait. Nodding to the waiter, he sauntered casually to a table near the windows, passing close to Forbisher and Maguire, feeling Doyle’s eyes track him as they might any stranger. Doyle was looking bored, like someone out of their depth, someone not at all interested in anything his boyfriend’s father might say. Not that he looked like anyone’s boyfriend, Bodie thought fairly, not really, it was just… He tried to look at him impartially. The way he slouched there, just a little too far down in the damask chair, his arm hanging just a little too languidly over the edge of the seat, just a little too close to Maguire’s legs…

Forbisher obviously didn’t care – in fact he was staring rather blatantly at Doyle himself, and if they hadn’t just spent the last eight months apart, if he hadn’t thought he’d lost it all, forever, Bodie would have been amused by the whole tableau. 

He looked up with a smile when the waiter came to take his drinks order, looked over the menu with pleasure. Been weeks since he’d eaten anything better than pub grub, if the others took their time getting there he might even have a chance to order. Steak Diane, maybe, or perhaps the salmon… But then there was a ripple at the door, and Coleman and Verity were past the doorman and inside. 

They looked uncomfortable, for all their money and stylings as well-to-do businessmen, this was completely out of their class. They stared around in confusion for a minute – be wondering who invited them, Bodie thought, with a kind of glee – and then seemed to see Maguire, sitting at the table, facing the entrance. 

Coleman, a tall, thin man with a nose like a beak and pale hair and eyes, started towards him at once, Verity turning to see where he went, but not following, not yet.

“Robbie? It _was_ you sent the invite then – told you it must have been, Malcolm!” He turned to his companion, gestured him to join them, and Bodie, from his vantage point against the far windows, light streaming in behind him, watched as Forbisher, safely seated in a high-backed chair with his back to the entrance, rolled his eyes and frowned at his stepson, thinking no doubt that it was some of his ne’er-do-well friends. He hadn’t met either man before of course – had been very careful not to, according to Doyle – but he’d know their names, their faces if he had any real nous at all. They just had to wait…

“Good lord!” Maguire was all conviviality, managing to be both quietly-spoken and jocular at the same time. Bodie wanted to smash his face in. How Doyle could… “Coleman! You old bastard! Didn’t know you were a member!”

Coleman had the grace to look embarrassed at this, behind him Verity was frowning, still looking around. 

“Have you met my father? Peter Forbisher? You know, we were just talking about you!”

Half hiding behind his menu, Bodie watched as Forbisher blanched briefly, then leaned forward in his seat to say something vicious to his step-son through his teeth. Doyle leaned forward as well, as though suddenly interested in proceedings, and Bodie hoped the mic was well-positioned.

Verity strode over to join them, still with half an eye on his surroundings. “Forbisher, is it?” he asked, “You’re a bit late with payment this month, aren’t you?”

“You told them my _name_?” Forbisher barked, so that heads turned at the disruption, glaring at Maguire. 

“Well why shouldn’t I? You’re my father after all…”

“Yes, I _am_ your father…”

Oh no, this was _not_ going to turn into a family squabble. Bodie put the menu down, stood up, and stretched, slowly and loudly, so that all eyes in the room turned to him. Most were disapproving, more than just Doyle’s were appreciative, and two pairs were clearly startled.

“You? What the devil’s going on here?” Coleman demanded, frowning at Bodie and turning to Forbisher.

“What are you doing in here?” Verity snapped, “You’re a _labourer_!”

“Who is he?” Forbisher hissed at his son, who looked surprised.

“I’ve no idea – why should I?”

“He works on your building site,” Doyle said happily to Forbisher, “That’s Bodie!”

“Bodie!” Maguire stood up, knocking the table. “You’ve got a nerve…”

“I don’t like this,” Verity said to Coleman, and began to turn away. Darlow and Bishop moved smoothly in front of him, blocking the front exit, and Verity panicked.

Like a music hall farce, Bodie thought delightedly, as he watched them all scrambling to get away when they clearly couldn’t. Who’d have thought such things were based on truth after all? Christmas pantomime in real life…

Doyle managed to keep his seat through it all, looking around interestedly as first Verity, then Coleman, then finally Forbisher were rounded up. Maguire stood warily beside him, surprisingly calm now. Bodie would have bet he’d be the first one to bolt, but perhaps there was more to him than met the eye after all. He thought of the Browning, and of Doyle lying bruised on the bed in the caravan, and felt less amused.

“Ray, what the _fuck’s_ going on?” Maguire was asking, as Bodie stepped up behind him and tapped him on the shoulder. 

Doyle stopped Maguire’s fist before it raised more than a few inches. “Don’t,” he said, face suddenly grim. He pulled a pair of handcuffs from his jacket pocket, and looked scornfully at him. “You, Robert Maguire, are _nicked_!”

Bodie felt like grinning all over again.

o0o

Cowley – devil’s heart that he had – actually managed a “Good lads”, when he swept up the steps to the club as Forbisher was led away, as though he’d set it all up from the start himself, and for all they knew, maybe he had. Maybe that _was_ why Bodie’d been sent to Sneddon in the first place, though why the old man would never _tell them_ …

He managed to avoid Doyle’s carefully chosen words too, as his car pulled up with a screech of tyres, Benny at the wheel, and he bustled away in a tirade about careful driving. “Stay with Bodie until your flat’s reinstated, 4.5!” he’d thrown over his shoulder, “My office, both of you, second of January!” Then he was gone.

“Not even a _Merry Christmas_ ,” Doyle said viciously, and Bodie turned back from staring after the vehicle as it slid down the small road between lines of shining Rolls and Mercs, and the bare-limbed trees. 

“Two weeks off though,” Bodie said, unable to remember the last time he’d had a whole fortnight to himself. “No – it’s only…” he did quick calculations in his head, “Three! Three weeks off.”

“It’ll take longer than that.” Doyle sounded grim, though Bodie was ninety nine per cent sure he didn’t mean it. He’d be back in the bosom of CI5 come January, he couldn’t live without it any more than Bodie could. It was, after all, what they did.

Doyle should have been happy, he’d looked happy in the club. It was over, they were back, everything was going to be alright. He gestured towards the Capri. “Back to mine?”

“Could do with a walk.” Doyle looked up at him, stared into his eyes for a long moment that Bodie couldn’t read. “Wanna come?”

They went into town in the end, wandered the Christmas-spangled streets, red and holly and silver and gold, jostling themselves through the crowds as if the great tides of people could wash away the dirt of the past months, would leave them clean and a part of humanity and the ordinary world once more. Eventually they meandered their way down to the river and onto Westminster Bridge, stood staring at the dark water below and the shining lights of London town all around them.

“I can’t undo what I did, Bodie, the choice I made.”

Bodie was silent for a moment, watching the streams of cars that were crossing London, one tangled side to the other, going about their own little lives. “No,” he said, knowing it was true. “But would you choose it again?”

He turned to look at Doyle then, could see the answer there on his face, in the way Doyle couldn’t speak, closed his eyes against even seeing Bodie.

Yes. Doyle would choose it again if he had to, if it meant that someone like Forbisher went down, and that someone like Julia could still be alive. That was Doyle, that was his Doyle, and he couldn’t – he wouldn’t – have him any other way.

He pursed his lips, because if he didn’t he’d cry or speak or shout, and then he moved into the small space between them, and put an arm across his shoulder, feeling Doyle’s start of surprise, and he held him tight. “Alright,” he said, “You do that. But you fucking well tell me what’s going on next time, right? No more Susies, no matter what Cowley says. We work together.”

Doyle glanced at him, then down at the orange-lit ground. “You reckon you can live with that, do you?” 

“No question,” Bodie said, knowing he could, because how couldn’t he?

Doyle looked up at him again, into his eyes, and Bodie looked steadily back. It would work, they’d make it work.

“No more Susies,” Doyle agreed, and he patted Bodie’s leg, where no one could see, but where Bodie could feel it solid and reassuring as a kiss, more even than Doyle’s lips against his skin. Then Doyle let Bodie turn him in the direction of shore, didn’t object when Bodie left his arm heavy over his shoulder. Bodie wanted to keep hold of him, just for now, just in case. It was too easy for Doyle to slip away into his world of idealism and gloom, away from the bright crowds and the fairy lights and the televisions. He’d hold him in place until his feet rooted again, until they were back where they’d been before.

For now – for now they had three weeks to themselves, in Bodie’s flat in London, and it was Christmas.

_December 2007_

__**Our Duty**  
Yet what were Love if man remains unfree,  
And woman's sunshine sordid merchandise:  
If children's Hope is blasted ere they see  
Its shoots of youth from out the branchlets rise:  
If thought is chained, and gagged is Speech, and Lies  
Enthroned as Law befoul posterity,  
And haggard Sin's ubiquitous disguise  
Insults the face of God where'er men be? 

Ay, what were Love, my love, did we not love  
Our stricken brothers so, as to resign  
For Its own sake, the foison of Its dower:  
That, so, we two may help them mount above  
These layers of charnel air in which they pine,  
To seek with us the Presence and the Power?  
\- Bernard O'Dowd 


End file.
